Ginobili can't take it easy in first game back

Published 10:35 pm, Thursday, January 24, 2013

Happy just to be wearing a Spurs uniform, rather than a sport coat, veteran guard Manu Ginobili kept busy on the sidelines when he wasn't on the court during a 106-102 win over the New Orleans Hornets on Wednesday at the AT&T Center.

Playing his first game since suffering a strained left hamstring during a Jan. 13 game against Minnesota, Ginobili spent most of his bench time either stretching or running along the sidelines, sometimes in a rapid-fire, side-to-side stepping motion.

“To keep it warm,” Ginobili said of the sore hamstring that kept him out of four games. “I knew I wasn't going to play much, so the stretches when I was on the bench, I had to keep the muscle firing. I had to do some cutbacks and stretching. It feels like I played 50 minutes. At timeouts when I was on the bench, I was still running to get it warm.”

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Ginobili played right to the limit of 17 minutes that had been set by the team's medical and athletic training staff. He totaled an efficient nine points, five assists and three steals.

Highest honor from Kobe: Matt Bonner doesn't use Twitter, so he hadn't heard about Kobe Bryant's live tweet session while watching an NBA TV replay of his 81-point game against the Raptors in 2006, a game in which Bonner started for Toronto.

That meant he hadn't seen Bryant's post in which he referred to Bonner as “the red mamba.”

Informed of the fact, Bonner was momentarily speechless. When he regained his composure, his response was classic Bonner.

“I'm going to take that to my grave,” he said. “I can see the epitaph: 'Here Lies Matthew Robert Bonner, a.k.a The Red Mamba (per Kobe Bryant).' I consider that the ultimate honor. There's only two mambas in the league.”

Picked a winner: More than any Spur, backup point guard Patty Mills knows what new big man Aron Baynes brings to the team. Mills believes the Spurs' guards will particularly enjoy one important skill.

“The thing he does well, he sets really good screens,” said Mills, who played with Baynes for Australia in the Olympics last summer. “Tony (Parker) is going to love him. He's pretty athletic, too. He can go up and get lobs. I'm excited to have him here.”

“He can really get up and down the court,” Budenholzer said. “He's got great feet. You watch him play pick-and-roll defense, he maybe even has the ability to switch and do things and be aggressive and hedge. Pick and roll is such a big part of the game. Having somebody we think can help or improve our pick-and-roll defense, it's a huge addition.”